It was only a matter of time. The sauce was always there, seeping into every discussion of this whole genius recipe premise. It might even be the reason we hatched the column at all.

Because all you do is simmer tomatoes for 45 minutes with butter and an onion. The full, true tomato flavor is a revelation in itself -- as is finding out you don't need to cook in all those layers of garlic and herbs and whatnot to get there (and you might even be better off without them).

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How fitting that this should come to us from Marcella Hazan -- who, with her husband and writing partner Victor, has been credited with making simple, good Italian food accessible to American cooks ever since the publication of her first cookbook in 1973.

Admittedly, this sauce won't be news to a lot of you. Many of our favorite bloggers already had beautiful epiphanies about it years ago. In fact, we could even play a game: Where were you when Obama was elected? ... When you heard Gourmet was folding? ... When you first tried the sauce?

My initiation came late. It was last August, and my CSA was heaving flats full of bursting yellow tomatoes on us. It was too much. It was glorious. And we're already coming up on that tomato tipping point again.

In a few months, we'll be giving the evil eye to $15/pound heirlooms shipped in from warmer climes -- but as of this moment, the farmers markets around here are fully armed with tomatoes in all colors and sizes. You could run through Union Square, pelting aggressive Greenpeace pamphleteers with warm, delicious rainbow pulp. Or you could leave me with my fantasies and gingerly gather up as many as you can, and turn them into sauce that tastes like pure summer, to stock your freezer and get you through gray months to come.

And to me that's the most exciting thing about the sauce. Most bloggers have zeroed in on the fact that Hazan's recipe is tailor-made for a 28-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes. It does make an excellent year-round sauce that way and is outrageously convenient. But fresh tomatoes are really just better.

Inevitably, they'll require one extra, rather satisfying step: peeling. There are a few ways you can attack this tomato prep, depending on whether you have a food mill, your disposition toward said food mill, and whether you feel like boiling water or not.

Food mill lovers:1. Halve tomatoes and warm them briefly in a covered saucepan before passing through a food mill, leaving all the bits and scraps behind.

Food mill haters/abstainers:2a. Boil the tomatoes for a minute, with an X cut in the bottom if you want to show off. Peel like a slippery banana. Chop rustically.

2b. Newly learned, via David Tanis via The Kitchn: Stick your tomatoes in the freezer. As they freeze, the water in the tomato's network of cells expands and bursts the cell walls -- terrible texture for a caprese salad or pico de gallo, but here they'll be getting broken down into sauce anyway, so that's okay. Then, as they thaw, they get slumpy and the skins slip off easily. No boiling and no food mills!

You then simmer away with the swirling butter and bobbing onion, till "the fat floats free from the tomato" -- which of course you should just stir back in. Then Hazan has you discard the onion, but I think you should actually eat it. Chopped up, it would make a fine relish for a grilled Italian sausage -- a Marcella-worthy hot dog onion sauce.

And the rest, as they say, is just gravy. There, I think I just cured your seasonal affective disorder.

Got a genius recipe you'd like to share -- from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected].

Photos by William Brinson (except for author photo of Marcella Hazan).

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I'm an ex-economist, ex-Californian who moved to New York to work in food media in 2007. Dodgy career choices aside, I can't help but apply the rational tendencies of my former life to things like: recipe tweaking, digging up obscure facts about pizza, and deciding how many pastries to put in my purse for "later."

Stumbled upon this recipe tonight after the sauce we tried was not quite "it." Researching for a fresh tomato sauce for my daughter's graduation party - she's wanting chicken schnitzel with a fresh tomato sauce spaghetti for one of her main dishes. My question is this: Has anyone made this ahead? If so, how did you keep it until serving time and how long did you keep it?Thanks ever so much!

I always make enough to freeze as it comes in handy for many dishes. I also add a big clean carrot cut in 3rds and now and then fresh basil. A good sauce to hijack. I love schnitzel and often make Thomas Keller's recipe panic crusted version.

My husband loves Spatini spaghetti sauce; yep - that stuff you may have enjoyed or endured in the cafeteria of your elementary school. He just loves it; so I actually buy large packets through Amazon to make it for him (no grocery stores carry it anymore). I never look forward to spaghetti and meatballs because I know I won't enjoy the sauce. Until now - finally an easy, quick and very delicious sauce that I can make at the same time the spatini is sputtering away on the stovetop. Tonight my husband and I both enjoyed our pasta with Rao's meatballs and I have found my dream sauce for many pasta nights to come. Used canned San Marzano tomatoes and it was delicious.

Wish you hadn't made the mention of Obama in the introduction. I definitely wasn't orgasmic when he won the election in 2008 and the re-election. But I will try this recipe. I'm always looking for new recipes to try to broaden my horizons and repertoire, and to learn new cooking techniques. Can't wait to try this since we are almost once a week pasta/spaghetti eaters and it gets a little boring with jarred sauce or not very good homemade sauce.

Made this last night with Rao's meatballs. Can't say enough about the simple goodness of so few ingredients! I did add a couple of parmesan rinds while the sauce simmered. The whole family loved this. Used San Marzano canned tomatoes. For me, one can equaled two cups.Can't wait for next tomato season to try with fresh ones. Thanks for sharing!

I have made this sauce for years, it is amazing! Simple, classic, sweet tomato goodness...I have been known to stand at the pot and eat it by the spoonful, so good! Please people, try it exactly as written, you will not be disappointed.

Thank you, for sharing your awesome tomato sauce recipe!! I have home grown San Marzano tomatoes hanging in clumps in my garden like grapes! Great way to make use of all those tomatoes....the next batch gets frozen for a cold rainy winter night here in CA. No SAD disorder for me this winter!!

Use those 12 ounces like I do. Add them to soup, canned or from scratch. I also use tomato sauce and tomatoes for one of my versions of huevos rancheros. Fry up some corn tortillas (5 to 6) until soft in oil or butter, fry up 2 or 3 eggs (over medium or hard), cut up the tortillas, top with the cooked eggs and tomato sauce mixed with salt and pepper, minced onions, oregano, minced tomatoes, minced Anaheim chiles and sage or not. You can use any or all of these suggestions. For the herbs, just use a pinch rubbed between your thumb and forefinger. Or, you can put your left over tomato and tomato juice in a blender with other veggie juice for a great veggie cocktail. Just strain out the pulp or use an electric juicer instead. Or, you can cook it all up and save the excess in the fridge for a couple of days and use it on rice or pasta. Best of luck!

I buy tomato sauce in the can to use to add to many of my Puerto Rican dishes. Is this sauce a spaghettis sauce, since all are writing that that is how they have used it, or can I use this as a tomato sauce for my receipes?

After reading all the rave reviews, we were very excited to try this recipe. We were fortunate enough to have locally grown San Marzano tomatoes, however, we were disappointed by the results. This recipe was only "good" at best - certainly not worthy of all the hype.

Hi. We made this recipe for years before discovering its simple secrets. The tomatoes must go through the fine blade of the food mill for best results. The onion should not be too big or impacts the flavor. And, most importantly, the sauce should be simmered at a reasonable pace. Occasionall bubbles in the simmer will not work. And, simmer it until it is quite thick, then, put in your wet pasta and a touch more pasta water if it is still too thick. The result is a wonderful, dense, very red film of tomato sauce on the pasta.

Lovely sauce---but it's all about the tomatoes. If fresh, they should be impeccable. Late summer/early fall tomatoes in northern New England have a lot of liquid and may take a bit longer to cook down to the proper consistency. (I used a combination of Opalka paste tomatoes and some heirlooms that needed using up.) To compensate for not having San Marzanos growing up the slopes of an Italian villa, I added a tablespoon of tomato paste and cooked the sauce 15 minutes longer. The result was delicious and almost helped me to forget that temperatures dropped into the forties last night (September 11) for the first time since early May.

I have been making this sauce for many years. I thought that what was "genius"about this recipe was the way you could transform a can of San Marazano tomatoes into an amazing sauce with this method. I have never used it to make sauce from scratch...too much added fat.

Five tablespoons of butter is a perfect amount of fat and fat is needed for the body to process certain vitamins and minerals. In fact, we use coconut oil mostly in cooking. It is not susceptible to turning to cholesterol when heated as corn, soy and other veggie oils. It can take high temps and we have both lost weight since I started using it and hubby's cholesterol is now in the normal low range. I even fry chicken in it and it comes out wonderful. I can use less oil and cook my food longer without it burning.Just google Dr. Mercola on oils to find out more.

great sauce, but an even fresher tasting one: big sautee pan, the bigger the better because you want it to reduce quickly so you don't lose any of that fresh tomato taste. glugs of olive oil. sautee slivers of garlic (lots) until just barely beginning to take on color. dump in lots of fresh tomatoes, skins on, diced (works with canned tomatoes in a pinch, but fresh is best). on high heat, simmer just until tomatoes collapse, reduce a bit and become saucy. during simmer, salt to taste and add a bit of sugar. it will be a sauce with small lumps of tomato in it. turn off heat, add handfuls of fresh, torn basil. if adding rosemary,add at beginning with tomatoes. now that's fresh.

great sauce, but an even fresher tasting one: big sautee pan, the bigger the better because you want it to reduce quickly so you don't lose any of that fresh tomato taste. glugs of olive oil. sautee slivers of garlic (lots) until just barely beginning to take on color. dump in lots of fresh tomatoes, skins on, diced (works with canned tomatoes in a pinch, but fresh is best). on high heat, simmer just until tomatoes collapse, reduce a bit and become saucy. during simmer, salt to taste and add a bit of sugar. it will be a sauce with small lumps of tomato in it. turn off heat, add handfuls of fresh, torn basil. if adding rosemary,add at beginning with tomatoes. now that's fresh.

I love this sauce! I've been making it for years. I don't discard the onion though. I actually dice it BEFORE cooking and just leave it in. It's hard to believe so few ingredients have so much flavor. You're right, Kristin, it's genius!

Discard the onions? On a cold day, maybe. Most recently we chopped them up and added to pizzas when we used this treasure of a sauce for a pizza class. I've puréed them to add to a vinaigrette, added them to various pestos (with sun-dried tomatoes, killer!), spread them bruschetta-style over crostini, stored them chilled and added to salads. And those are just the uses that come most immediately to mind. Discard? I can barely say the word. Some instructions were meant to be thought beyond.

We have made the sauce since the first cook book. We make it all the time. But, only in the last few years did we learn that the sauce is best when quite thick. She tells you to cook it at a brisk simmer, which works well. We keep it at about "twenty of' on an electric stove until thick. Then, when you drop in slighly moist pasta from the boiling water with tongs. you get a result even more superior to other sauces.

During peak of tomato season, I roast the tomatoes quickly in hot oven (in lieu of boiling them) before running them through the food mill, then finish them per Ms. Hazan's recipe. I like to think the roasting adds a layer of toasted tomato flavor. Regardless, this sauce is a family favorite.

This recipe appeared also in Marcella's first book,The Classic Italian Cookbook. I came to this book in its sixth iteration around 1978, and it remains my favorite--hands down. Throw away the onion? Never. The cook always ate that in the kitchen!

Sorry! It was supposed to read "(well--sauced) tongue in cheek" I seem to always battle iPhone spellchecker for the words that I need/want. No need ( which i just "corrected" from "Monopoly") in sounding like an illiterate troll. ;-)

This is my go-to, got-to-have-it sauce. I make it all the time. My favorite way to serve it is over rigatoni or mezzi rigatoni on a plate with creamed lima beans. Marcella's sauce is miraculous and the combination of the pasta next to the lima beans is delicious.

I've been making a version of this sauce for years but never knew it was originally a recipe of Marcella Hazan's! I saute the onions and leave them in the sauce though. I never peel skins off tomatoes either, seems a waste of time to me;especially if in a sauce that I can whirl in a food processor. This is my daughter's favorite tomato sauce EVER.

*Double GASP* Kristen, This is simply BEYOND genius. Mindblowing, I fished out the onions into a bowl, smooshed them and added some cold Basmati rice, Can't adequately describe to you how much I enjoyed it! Thank you a thousand times!,

Gasp! Tomato sauce without garlic? Never! Are you sure that Marcell is Italian?well, I'll try it with onion. I can always sub ( or add?) my beloved garlic - which I will try in just about anything other than cereal (now there's an idea). Apologies to Marcella - this was meant as (well-saucer) tonue in cheek. ;-). This the the simplest, most usable genius recipe so far, for me. Great job, Kristen. Brava!

One great use for the onion I discovered last night: I was making meatballs to go with the sauce, and the tomato-braised onions tasted amazing chopped and tossed into the meat. The cooked onions gave the meat an extra sweetness and roundness.

I found this in an Italian cookbook years ago and have been making this for almost 20 years. It never ceases to impress my guests and myself every time. Its so easy that we named it No Bones Pasta Sauce.
We just came home from vacation and it was the only thing I could make with my pantry last night. You can make it with canned chopped tomatoes in a pinch but fresh tomatoes elevates it to another level. I would agree..genius!

I made this recipe during winter last year with some friends, and it completely turned our tomato sauce worlds upside down. So long to chopping herbs and sauteing aromatics in olive oil. This is the easiest and tastiest sauce ever! I was so thankful that my friends didn't want to eat the onion after it had finished cooking. I gobbled that whole thing right up and it was delish!

Cathy is a food preserving expert and author of Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry: Recipes and Techniques for Year-Round Preserving.

I make this sauce all the time during tomato season, and freeze it (in jars) for the winter. A couple of summers back, I began oven roasting the tomatoes and then making this sauce. It's a nice alternative, a little richer, slightly more tomato-y, if that's possible.

I make this sauce at least once a week. with a green salad, it makes a fantastic lazy sunday dinner. If I find myself without an onion in the house, I sub in a tablespoon of vodka and a teaspoon of onion powder. It's not as good as the fresh onion, but it is close. Let the butter do the heavy lifting.

I make this sauce at least once a week. With a green salad, it is the perfect lazy Sunday dinner. In a pinch, when I find myself without an onion in the house, I sub in an ounce of vodka and a tablespoon of onion powder. it isn't as good as the fresh onion, but it gets close.

I make a pizza sauce that's similar. I use several cloves of smashed garlic rather than the onion, and reduce it until it's quite thick. Whenever I teach this in a class, as soon as I get to the butter, I get looks of: Dude? (not a word I use often) Seriously, butter? One taste and they're addicts. The onion: seriously genius. Especially on a pizza.

If I'm making this sauce with fresh tomatoes, do you think the tomatoes should be seeded? I guess I'm used to sauces that require that...but here it looks like you haven't done that. Any reasons for or against seeding?

You know, I've never seeded them because Marcella doesn't. Unless you have some really burly tomatoes, I don't think the seeds should be too noticeable -- and you'd lose so much of the good juice trying to get them out. My verdict: don't seed. Anyone disagree?

Every year I make up two bushels of tomatoes from Eagle Bridge Farm in upstate New York. I pick the tomatoes myself, wash them well, core them, and cut them into four to six pieces depending on the size of the tomato. I have four 12-quart stockpots on the stove ready to go. I plop the tomatoes in and add some Malden Salt (I'm sure kosher would be fine) and a few glugs of olive oil. Then I cook the tomatoes over low heat for as long as it takes to get to a sauce-like consistency. I put them through an Italian tomato press that I got at William-Sonoma the year of the flood, let them cool, and freeze them in little bags in one cup increments. They lay nice and flat in the freezer. I make Marcella's "miracle" sauce all the time with just one little bag using either a small onion cut in half or half of a medium onion cut in half, and, of course, the butter. I really prefer the sauce smooth and without the seeds.

Marcella has to be one of the nicest and toughest ladies out there. I once had a facebook conversation (nicest lady) with her about branzino http://tinyurl.com/3s88znt... and she was dead on right in her assessment and taught me how important it is to always keep learning. The fact that she is willing to take on molecular gastronomy has also been interesting to follow (hence toughest lady) I greatly admire and enjoy her passion and love of food.

Love the "reverse blanching" technique from David Tanis. Aki and Alex, of Ideas in Food (http://blog.ideasinfood...), recommend doing this with asparagus: they get perfectly soft-crunchy, as if you blanch them, but you don't lose any of their wonderful flavor.

I've been making this sauce since a friend gave me a paperback Marcella cookbook -- predating "Essentials" -- that listed the recipe as Tomato Sauce No. 3 and called for a full stick of butter. Spectacularly, astonishingly, crave-inducingly good.

i have to say - last year, i packed away tons of tomatoes int he freezer, delighted at the way the skin would peel off. In the summer heat, sliding the skin from frozen tomatoes is great. The cold tomatoes are even a bit of a relief from the heat. But ... by january ... peeling frozen tomatoes was icy, icy torture on a cold night. never again!

I met Marcella Hazan at the CIA when she was stomping for her latest book Essentials of Italian Cooking in 1992. (She made an artichoke dish from the cookbook). I have been making this sauce for many years and had no idea that it was from that same cookbook. It is a recipe that has become an urban legend!

A) Yes! Love this sauce. I love that the most perfect tomato sauce uses butter instead of olive oil, how satisfying :). B) Love your game, I could rattle the three locations off right now. C) Love the contents of the freezer!

Yum! We can loads of sauce, salsa and ranchero every summer - I have never tried butter and onion though - always garlic and olive oil! And I am lazy - I don't peel the tomatoes for sauce I just motorboat them into submission with my immersion blender ... so now I need to try it this way!!!